Pluto finally gets its close-up

Saturday

Jul 11, 2015 at 12:01 AMJul 12, 2015 at 11:18 AM

On Tuesday, after traveling 3 billion miles over nine and a half years, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft will finally shoot past Pluto, capturing the first clear images of the planet and its moons. Those images of the icy dwarf planet will be relayed back to Earth - a process that should run smoothly thanks to work at Ohio State University a decade ago.

On Tuesday, after traveling 3 billion miles over nine and a half years, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft will finally shoot past Pluto, capturing the first clear images of the planet and its moons.

Those images of the icy dwarf planet will be relayed back to Earth — a process that should run smoothly thanks to work at Ohio State University a decade ago.

The high-gain antenna used to connect the robotic probe with mission managers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory was tested at the OSU ElectroScience Laboratory in 2004 and 2005.

"There’s probably like 10 places in the country (where) you can measure that antenna,” said Ron Schulze, lead engineer with the New Horizons antenna system.

He would know. Schulze did his graduate work at Ohio State and performed research in its anechoic chamber, which provides an echo-free environment.

“I knew that I could get a measurement facility and have the technical support that we would need when problems would arise, but also you know we’d also have the freedom to do the measurements that we needed,” he said.

Schulze and his team twice used the lab’s anechoic chamber exclusively for several weeks to make sure the antenna was spot on, said Teh-hong Lee, an electrical- and computer-engineering researcher at Ohio State.

“They miss .01 degree, for example, they can miss Earth completely,” he said.

Ohio State, Stanford University, the University of Colorado and Johns Hopkins developed and tested parts for New Horizons, said Curt Niebur, a NASA program scientist for the $720 million project.

“For the things that NASA does, we rely on the very best, the most innovative, the most creative ideas possible,” Niebur said. “Universities are an exceptional place to get access to the people with those ideas and access to the people with the skills to make those ideas become reality.”

The OSU chamber also is used by companies to test radar systems and other types of antennas.

“Once you are known in certain areas, then people come to you,” Lee said. “We can also go out to solve people’s problems, companies or even government agencies.”

Schulze, who worked with Lee while in graduate school, said he tapped Lee’s knowledge to create a solution when the signals from the probe’s high- and medium-gain antennas were colliding.

“It’s like ... ‘Let’s just sit down and brainstorm about some ideas we had to try to fix it,’ ” Schulze said.

The probe was in hibernation mode until December, when NASA woke it up and instructed it to start transmitting images of Pluto, its entourage of moons and other features of its home in the unexplored and widely unknown Kuiper Belt.

Since it was discovered in 1930, scientists have struggled to explain why a planet with such a diminutive radius — just 740 miles — could exist beyond the giants Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

In 1992, astronomers discovered there were other dwarf planets, prompting the International Astronomical Union to reconsider its definition of planet.

In 2006, with New Horizons already on its way, Pluto lost its title as the ninth planet in the solar system and was relabeled a dwarf planet. Since then, more than 1,000 have been discovered in the Kuiper Belt alone.

The antennas are transmitting raw images every day, which are being posted on NASA and Johns Hopkins websites, said Chris Hersman, a mission engineer at the Applied Physics Laboratory.

“I want people to know that we ... want to bring them along on this adventure,” said Hersman, who also graduated from Ohio State.

Because of the distance between New Horizons and Earth, simply sending a message to the spacecraft takes four hours. Getting an answer takes the same amount of time.

Sending back all of the images the probe has taken and will continue to take during the flyby will take nearly a year and a half.

There was a glitch on July 4, which cut communication briefly. The spacecraft went into safe mode but was brought back into operation within hours.

“The (problems) that we have had were … enough to keep the team on our toes,” Hersman said. “We don’t get complacent; we’re always paying attention.”

Once New Horizons completes its mission, it could go on to complete a similar expedition of an unnamed dwarf planet beyond Pluto. NASA has yet to approve the project, Hersman said, adding that the spacecraft has enough power to last until the mid-2030s.

Either way, the probe will continue to travel, billions of miles from Earth.

“Our principle investigator likes to remind us that … in 4?billion years, when the sun explodes and burns up Earth, the New Horizons spacecraft will still be safe,” Hersman said.

mdevito@dispatch.com

@MariaDeVito13

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.